Cottonwode: The wave

What's the best tree? I mean, come on. It's the cottonwood. And this is the time of the year for an ode.

Petioles ("little feet") are the little stalks that connect leaves to their stems. Cottonwoods, like their cousins the quaking aspens, have flattened petioles that make the leaves wave back and forth in any breeze at all. A friendly little oscillation, back and forth. It always reminds me of the girls in my high school who marched like wooden soldiers, their little hips and skirts waving back and forth, back and forth in May.

This is an excellent enjoyment of a summer breeze.

Subscribe for a minute a week on landscape and history, at rss-longa.beehiiv.com. Fun fact: We eat the petioles of celery. (And rhubarb!) The cottonwoods I knew were Populus deltoides. Deltoid as in triangle-shaped, but it's a very rounded triangle. Photo: Chris Licht, “Cottonwood leaf at Beecher Island near Wray, Colorado,” 23 July 2016, Wikimedia Commons, CC- BY-SA 4.0. Dr. Grayson, “Cottonwood leaves wave at you because of flat petioles,” YouTube. Nailheads, “Wooden Soldiers 2,” YouTube. Robert Wellman Campbell, "Cottonwode: The wave," RSS Longa, 5 June 2025, public domain via CC0 1.0.